[2] After the publication of a 2017 Politico article, Chalupa became embroiled in a controversy that alleged past activities were part of a conspiracy between the DNC and the Ukrainian government to undermine Trump's campaign.
[6] Tanya's and Leo's parents brought them to the United States as children seeking asylum from the Soviet Union, and they grew up in the Bronx, New York.
[1][6] The incident led her mother to single-handedly wage a successful 2-year lobbying campaign in the California legislature for a mandatory child safety seat law that passed in 1982.
[1][6] Chalupa attended Davis Senior High School, pursued peace and conflict studies at UC Berkeley, and received her J.D.
[7] She began warning Ukrainian-American community leaders in January 2016 that Manafort was Russian president Vladimir Putin's "political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections.
[7] A week later, Chalupa met with a foreign policy legislative assistant to Representative Marcy Kaptur in a failed attempt to start a congressional investigation into Manafort's activities.
[7] Andrii Telizhenko, who worked in the embassy as third secretary under Shulyar at the time, told Politico that she asked him to pass on to Chalupa any information he came across about connections between Trump, Manafort, and Russia.
[13] He began repeating the story in 2019 to U.S. right-wing media, Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and House Intelligence Committee minority chair Devin Nunes.
The Embassy representatives unambiguously refused to get involved in any way, as we were convinced that this is a strictly U.S. domestic matter.”[16] In late April 2016, Chalupa began receiving daily administrative alerts from Yahoo!
[7] The conservative watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed a complaint against Chalupa and the DNC with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in August 2017.
Senator Chuck Grassley urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) on two occasions to investigate alleged coordination between Chalupa and the Ukrainian government to interfere in the 2016 election.
[24] Chalupa denied the claims, saying that she acted as a part time consultant in 2016, and that she was never asked by DNC officials to "go to the Ukrainian Embassy to collect information."